Fancy a sure fire tip on the World Cup winner? Consult Cortana

Cortana, Microsoft's Siri-like personal assistant for Windows Phone 8.1, has so far been 100 per cent accurate when predicting World Cup results.

The company started to consult her at the beginning of the last 16 knockout round and she has correctly identified the winners before each match was played. Admittedly, they've run true to form so far with the eight quarter finalists - Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Argentina and Belgium - all topping their respective tables in the group stage. But it's still impressive and is on a par with Paul the Octopus' run during the 2010 tournament in Germany. And Cortana need not worry about becoming sushi either.

Cortana draws its suggestions from the Bing predictions engine, so even those without access to the silky voiced assistant can give it a whirl. Each prediction is based on win, loss and draw records, game time, weather conditions, home advantages and other factors, so are crunched together from data.

However, it could all have gone askew had Chile's late bar-rattling effort against Brazil had gone in. Or USA's late surge been more successful. Or the Swiss' header against the post been a fraction over to the right. Or... you get the picture.